


you see her eyes are open

by protectoroffaeries



Series: they think me macbeth [9]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Anger, Biblical References, Confusion, F/M, Family Secrets, Love, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, References to Macbeth, Religion, Religious Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 17:48:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11926041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protectoroffaeries/pseuds/protectoroffaeries
Summary: "You see her eyes are open." "Ay, but their sense is shut."





	you see her eyes are open

**Author's Note:**

> 235 years

Her father's name is John. Mother tells her so when she asks after him. She's only four years old at the time. She doesn't know much about the world, doesn't much care yet. She just has a vague idea that maybe there should be a man around besides her grandfather. Maybe.

He's a soldier, Mother says, fighting for a great cause. Frances doesn't understand what that means, but she nods along because Mother is using her serious voice. She tells Frances not to mention him outside the house. Frances agrees without understanding why.

They try to meet him, but something goes wrong.

The first of many things that goes wrong.

~

Aunt Martha seems nice enough. She's not much like Frances’ mother, nor is her father like Frances’ other grandfather, but Frances is used to change. There was certainly no permanence in the ocean over the past month, no permanence in her life over the past years. Mother's death scrambled everything. And yet, Frances is still here.

Frances wants to ask about her father, and when she'll meet him, but she remembers her mother’s firm words, _young ladies do not speak out of turn,_ and says nothing. Maybe she will never meet him. Men never really seem to exist but on the fringes.

Aunt Martha organizes her education, arranges her a governess. Frances would rather roam than learn arithmetic, but she already knows life is not about what the heart wants.

~

“Where is my father?” Frances finally asks one day, after Aunt Martha encourages her to speak her mind.

Aunt Martha blinks. Then, she beckons Frances to follow her. Without a single word. Autumn leaves crunch beneath their feet as Aunt Martha leads her outside, and somehow, that is the only sound. Where has the wildlife gone?

The stone is cold beneath her fingertips, but the chill brings her comfort. Frances traces the lettering on her father’s gravestone and wonders why no one bothered to tell her.

~

Frances reads Latin. Dulce et decorum.  _Sweet and proper._

God bless America, the land of deep and unforgivable ironies.

~

Mother's death was difficult. She grew sick with the closing of summer and died before the closing of autumn. Frances was kept from her, she remembers, to keep from catching her own death.

Father died quicker, says Aunt Martha. Father died with bullets peppered in his chest. Father died poisoning river water with his blood. Father died blotting the Revolution on the map of history, like countless other men. And perhaps he died for glory and greatness, perhaps he sacrificed for Frances and her mother and her aunt and all the people of the New United States, perhaps his death meant something. But Goddammit if he still is not dead. What use are the dead to the living? What use is her father's sacrifice, especially amongst all this squabbling? When this damned country could fall at any moment?

It would be treason to her name, her family, her country, if she asked. So she whispers the questions with her lips against stone, and her father never replies.

~

 _Alexander Hamilton._ The name tastes familiar. Frances cannot place it. There is a rank next to his name - a lieutenant colonel like her father. Perhaps they were friends. That does not explain how she knows the name.

She is not supposed to snoop; it is unladylike to go through her aunt’s personal things, but her curiosity forever outweighs her sense. Or so she's been told. Anyway, the letter is addressed to her father, and she is arguably closer to him in blood than his sister. From that perspective, it's practically her duty to read what this Col. Alexander Hamilton has to say.

Frances reads the letter once, twice, three times before she can make anything of it. She scans over certain sections of it again. It reads like a love letter, she decides eventually.

Granted, Frances has only read one other love letter, written from her uncle to her aunt, and this letter is a little less… innocent. But there are passionate promises wrapped in a poetic command of language that rivals the Greeks, which is ironic since Frances knows how men of that time came to feel for one another.

Perhaps _this_ is why no one speaks of her father.

~

What is in a name? _John_ baptized Jesus Christ. Frances would never say Judas was a better name for her father, but maybe Peter. The greatest thing about man is that he is imperfect, after all. 

What would he have called _her,_ had he been around to speak his mind? 

~

“Did you meet Colonel Hamilton?” Frances asks, after years and years of trying to erase the name from her mind. She still can't say what is familiar about it.

Aunt Martha is not shocked. Somehow, she always knows when Frances is wrong. “I wrote him once. To tell him of your father’s death.”

“They were lovers.” Frances counts the stars twinkling above them, one, two, three, and wonders if her father ever reached them. Did he repent?

(Why would he repent? Why would he regret anything?)

“I believe so,” Aunt Martha agrees. It is far too easy for her to agree. Damn her, why could she not say Frances is lost in childish delusions? Young girls see lovers in every mirror.

“Why?”

Aunt Martha offers a shrug. “Why not?”

God’s word on her tongue, and yet, Frances has nothing to say.

~

Frances wants to know him. She's always wanted to know him. But she knows now that she can never understand him. War? Love? Death? How can Frances put these things together to build a man who lies in the ground?

She wants to ask.

But she is no one but herself because of him, and so what does it matter?

~

 


End file.
